Offer students more help, state's colleges are urged

Updated 10:00 pm, Monday, November 13, 2006

James Sulton's name was spelled incorrectly in the original version of this article.

The state's colleges should be more accessible to students who should be better prepared for the rigors of university academics, according to the Washington Learns report released Monday.

It calls for the creation of an ambitious scholarship program to cover the costs of college tuition for low-income students and those whose parents do not have baccalaureate degrees.

Starting next year under the proposal, students would be told that they are eligible for the scholarship in seventh grade. They would have to graduate from a state high school with at least a "C" average and have no felony convictions to receive a full or partial college scholarship.

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The report also recommends making the cost of college more predictable for all Washington families. It asks the Legislature to limit annual tuition increases to no more than 7 percent a year. The state would fund the remaining needs of higher education.

The report does not specify how much the scholarship program would cost or how the state would pay for increased education funding.

The goal is to "educate more students to higher levels," said Denny Heck, chairman of Washington Learns' higher education advisory committee.

The state should increase funding for worker training, particularly among residents who are poor or have limited English proficiency, according to the report. It proposes an expansion of state need grants to low-income adults who take only one class at a time and an increase in the enrollment in high-demand, technical fields.

Washington has the third-lowest college entrance rate in the nation, said Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates during an address at the report's release.

"Across the whole spectrum of education, we need to prepare our students to succeed to the next level," he said.

The report suggests that 11th-graders take a "college readiness" exam to determine if they are prepared for higher education -- and what they may need to work on during their senior year of high school. It calls for such a test to be established by the end of 2008.

The state should align high school graduation and college entrance requirements to ease the transition to higher education. Students ought to be required to take at least three years of math in order to get into a state college.

"The fact that there is no clean mesh between what students are told they need to do in order to finish high school and told what they need to do in order to get admitted to college is a big issue for us," said James Sulton, executive director of the Washington Higher Education Coordinating Board.

The report calls for the state's universities to show measurable performance for the additional funding, such as the number of students who earn their degrees on time.